\"Louisiana Senator\" Allen Ellender Hand Signed FDC Dated 1933 For Sale

Up for sale "Louisiana Senator" Allen Ellender Hand Signed FDC Dated 1933.

ES-2902C

Allen

Joseph Ellender (September

24, 1890 – July 27, 1972) was Parish in south Louisiana,

who served from 1937 until 1972 when he died in office in Maryland at the age of eighty-one. He was a Democrat who was originally allied

with Huey Long. As senator, he

compiled a generally a Democratic senator and member of the democratic party

affiliation the “ Dixiecrats” ] who opposed desegregation in the south. He

never switched parties and stayed a southern democrat on record record, voting

77 percent of the time with the Conservative Coalition on domestic issues. A

staunch segregationist, he signed

the Southern Manifesto in

1956, voted against the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and opposed anti-lynching legislation

in 1938. Unlike many Democrats he was not a "hawk" in foreign policy and opposed the Vietnam War. Ellender

served as President Pro Tempore, and the Chair of the Senate Appropriations

Committee. He also served as the Chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee for

over 16 years. Ellender was born in the town of Montegut in

Terrebonne Parish, a center of Cajun culture.

He was the son of Victoria Marie (Javeaux) and Wallace Richard Ellender, Sr. He

attended public and private schools, and in 1909 he graduated with a bachelor of arts degree from the Roman Catholic St. Aloysius College in New Orleans. (It has been reorganized as Brother Martin High School).

He graduated from Tulane University Law

School in New Orleans with a LL.B. in 1913, was admitted to the bar later that

year, and launched his practice in Houma. In 1937 he took his Senate seat,

formerly held by the fallen Huey Long and slated for the Democratic

nominee Oscar Kelly Allen, Sr.,

of Winnfield, the seat of

Long's home parish of Winn. Allen had won the

Democratic nomination by a plurality exceeding 200,000 votes, but he died

shortly thereafter. His passing enabled Ellender's election. The Democrats had

so dominated state politics since the disfranchisement of

most blacks at the turn of the century, that the primary was the decisive

election for offices. Lorris M. Wimberly of Arcadia in Bienville Parish, meanwhile, succeeded Ellender as House

Speaker. Wimberly was the choice of Governor Richard Webster Leche and thereafter Lieutenant

Governor Earl Kemp Long, who

succeeded Leche to the governorship. Ellender was repeatedly re-elected to the

Senate and served until his death in 1972. He gained seniority and great influence.

He was the leading sponsor of the federal free lunch program, which was enacted

in 1945 and continues; it was a welfare program that helped poor students.

Ellender served as the powerful chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee from 1951 to 1953 and 1955

to 1971, through which capacity he was a strong defender of sugar cane interests. He chaired the even more

powerful Senate Appropriations Committee from 1971 until his

death. Denoting his seniority as a Democrat in the Senate, Ellender was President pro tempore of the U.S. Senate from

1971–1972, an honorific position. Ellender was an opponent of Republican

Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, who exposed communist infiltration in the government during the

1950s. In March 1952, Ellender stated the possibility of the House

of Representatives electing the president in that year's general election and

added that the possibility could arise from the entry of Georgia Senator Richard Russell, Jr. into

the general election as a third party candidate and thereby see neither

President Truman or Republican Senator Robert A. Taft able to secure enough votes from the

Electoral College. Ellender strongly opposed the federal civil

rights legislation of the 1960s, which included the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to

enforce blacks' constitutional rights in voting. Many, particularly in the Deep

South, had been disfranchised since

1900. In the aftermath of the Duck Hill lynchings, he also helped block a proposed

anti-lynching bill which had previously been passed in the House,

proclaiming, "We shall at all cost preserve the white supremacy of

America." He did support some Louisiana state legislation sought by civil

rights groups, such as repeal of the state poll tax (a

disfranchisement mechanism). On August 31, 1964, during President Johnson's

signing of the Food Stamp Act of 1964,

the president noted Ellender as one of the members of Congress he wanted to

compliment for playing "a role in the passage of this legislation".    Early in his tenure, the Audubon Society, with an interest in the ivory-billed woodpecker,

which faced extinction, persuaded Ellender to work for the establishment of the

proposed Tensas Swamp National Park to preserve bird habitat: 60,000 acres of

land owned by the Singer Sewing Company in Madison Parish in

northeastern Louisiana. Ellender's bill died in committee. In 1998, long after

Ellender's death, Congress established the Tensas River

National Wildlife Refuge.